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The author offers a literary-naturalist study of Shakespeare's use of bird imagery, surveying frequent bird references across plays and poems, identifying species and examining their symbolic, descriptive, and metaphorical roles. Drawing on personal observation, literary sources, and popular lore, the text considers how bird song, habits, and characters enrich similes and characterisation, contrasts Elizabethan poetic attitudes with earlier and later writers, and supplies species notes and illustrations to support readings. The work blends ornithology and criticism to show the range and accuracy of avian detail in Shakespeare's language.
Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. Obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged. Two misspelled words were corrected.
Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the end of the book. Some illustrations were moved nearer to the relevant text.
Page headers are presented as sidenotes. Printer’s marks indicating placement of illustrations were removed.